Just about two weeks ago I made a major decision about my future. After spending three years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I followed my husband (and his start-up job), I decided that it was time to return home to California with the kids.
This means leaving my husband behind for an indefinite period of time, turning myself into a single mom for the duration, and finding out what a commuter marriage is like. The prospect is both frightening and strangely exhilarating.
For months I avoided making this decision, thinking that I could make it through one more year in New Mexico even though I really haven't found full-time work that I enjoy. I had also been giving into pressure from my teen-ager who feels ambivalent about leaving, now that he's made good friends here as well as back in California.
But I soon realized that I was letting fear drive my decision-making, choosing the comfort of my safety net here with my husband and family even as I felt constricted by those same bonds.
“What's wrong with you?” I asked myself. “If there women who can endure eighteen-month deployments of their husbands to Iraq and Afghanistan, surely you can survive in Palo Alto?”
So here I am, forty-five, an unemployed Comparative Literature Ph.D. about to broach the job market in Silicon Valley with my two kids in tow, and a determination to get my career back on track again after a three year hiatus.
The more time that passes since I reached this decision, the better I feel about it, especially since I know I can count on my husband to support me, to talk to me, to sense how I'm really feeling and respond accordingly.
It was a risk moving to Albuquerque three years ago, and in some ways, it's a risk going back to California on my own, but what better time to take risks than in middle age when the worst thing that can happen to you is getting stuck in your ways? I'd rather fall on my face taking a chance on my own than hunker down in my comfortable domesticity for twelve more months. And that more than anything is the reason I'm saying good-bye to the many good friends I've made here in the southwest and hello again to the friends I left behind me.
2 comments:
best of luck on your move. hope it proves that risks are worth taking.
Finally found the time, at midnight, to look at your blog. Only to discover that you're moving back to PA. Into your old house? or A new one? Risk. Risk. Risk. Getting up in the morning is risky. Moving back to Drager's Market....not too risky. Moving away from Drager's market....very risky indeed! You'll be up and running in no time, full steam ahead! Risk. One can, run the risk of....or avoid risk, mitigate risk, insure against risk, even try to hide from it. But, darn if it doesn't sneak up on us all and bite us in the ass when we least expect it. Fear not. Death and risk are the only things we can count on for sure.....as long as you get up in the morning. XO Amy
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